I wrote to you last week with a bad email exchange I had with Sony regarding the hard drive on my Playstation 3. They had replied with form letters, no matter what I wrote to them. I ended up calling Sony and setting up a service call, but they insisted on having proof of purchase to get the machine fixed under warranty. They said if I didn’t include a copy of my receipt, I would have to pay $150 for the service call. Since I got the PS3 as a gift, I couldn’t get a receipt and was upset at having to pay money to fix a machine that was still under warranty.

Now to the good news: I received a call this morning from a number I didn’t recognize, and since I’m at work I let it go to voicemail. Imagine my surprise when I listened to the message and it was a lady from Sony. She said they had found my email exchange and call notes, and instead of having my machine serviced, they are going to switch it out with a new machine (as a one-time courtesy).

She specifically stated that I would not need to include a proof of purchase, and that she would upgrade the exchange in their system to make sure things went smoothly.

I’ll let you know if/when I get the new machine from Sony. In the meantime, they’ve redeemed themselves in my eyes. Someone took the time to track me down in their system and make sure I was happy. Hooray!

Sony refused to do this for me even though it was only 1 month old AND it was a 40g, so the product hadn’t even been out for a year…

I sold the busted PS3 instead and bought a Wii. I might even send them a picture of my CC statement for that $2400 Samsung HT5084 that I bought instead of the 46″ XBR4, just like I mailed a pic of all my flights that I’ve purchased ever since American Airlines decided to not compensate me a lousy $25 bus ticket after they made me miss my flight.

@WingZero987:
Why would you stick someone else with a busted PS3 unit?

If the unit was less than 1 month only why could you get a receipt? You shouldn’t have needed one but it should have been easy enough to get a manager to see acknowledge that your unit was to new to not be under warranty.

Awesome that Sony stepped up, sucks that it took bad press from the Consumerist to make it happen.

It should not require the threat of bad press before companies hold to their own policies and actually serve the customers (ala Customer Service) like they are supposed to. Too bad stories like this are becoming more and more common. Some big companies are the worst scammers nowadays: “We refuse to do our jobs…wait, you’re calling the press? OK, we will help you.”

Actually, if he gets a refurb, it only comes with a 90 day warranty. If he gets a new one, it comes with a 1 year. (BETTER NOT LOSE THAT IMPORTANT RECEIPT!) Getting a new system matters a lot.

I don’t know why Sony requires a receipt when Nintendo and MS don’t. I assume this will be a much bigger problem coming up. All I see now now, even on pro PS3 msg boards like BluRay, are “My blu ray drive went out. What do I do?” Is this the second coming of the RROD?

I got so pissed at Sony’s lousy customer service that I took a hammer & smashed the piece of crap MP3 player that kept resetting itself and losing all of my settings every couple of weeks. Then I shipped the pieces back to their ‘service center’ with a note explaining what they could do with it and all of their products. Didn’t gain me anything, but I felt a lot better afterwards.

Woohoo! I am having a similar problem with Sony. I got my PS3 as a gift as well, and I don’t have a receipt. Funny thing is, they don’t want to cover it, and it was manufactured in July 2007. So, by that standard, it’s proof enough that it still falls under warranty. All I got from my aunt was a credit card statement, but I don’t want to ask her to go down and try to get a copy of the receipt from the store. Hopefully, I inform them of this story on this website and get my PS3 fixed. I mean, I’m a loyal Ps3 user, what do they want me to do, switch to Xbox or Nintendo?

@trk182: Oh why oh why consumerist do you attempt to help out a customer’s obviously blatant scamming attempts? Such futile work against bazillion dollar corpora… I mean helpless small mom and pop shop business.

@Techguy1138: It’s flat out Sony’s policy, and only Sony has this policy out of the big 3. I spent 4 hours on the phone with them. A retail representative told me to keep calling until someone would help, but that simply made a supervisor over at Sony Computer Tech Support (HI JASON) tell me I was “harassing them” by simply asking that they honor their warranty.

I gave up and was sick of consumer reps insinuating that I was a thief or scammer. They’ll probably get my money when the MGS4 pack comes out as much as it pains me to give them even more cash after this treatment, but I’m definitely writing them a letter since I’m obviously upset on this inconsistent treatment of customers.

@Techguy1138: They said their policy is, No receipt, not in warranty. I just got off the phone with Asher (employee 47489), who blatantly told me that there is no legitimacy to this story, and there is no sony exec. who can confirm this is true. So, I take it a website that is built upon the premises that a company fucks people over, would blatanly LIE and say Sony helps out customers, when that isn’t right?

This is the consumerist where people are encourage to NOT just roll over and give a company another chance. Make them give you reason.

You should try as best you can to document all of your dealing with Sony. Then try and contact them about your treatment. Your goal here is to make a contact in the Sony corporation. Since you sold your PS3 you can not really expect to get anything of tangable value.

You will need to keep a cool head. You seem like you fly off the handle. That woun’t get you to far.

What you should get out of this is someone to appologise for your previous issues and be a personal contact for future problems.

If you get get a real contact or someone to vry for your business screw ‘em.

If you really want a PS3 buy a used version from gamestop. It’ll be cheaper, come with a limited warranty, and Sony won’t see a dime of that sale.

Any lawyers out there wanna comment on the legality of this “company policy”? Seems to be quite a little scam going there. Convince customer to mail off original receipt for Bluray compensation, then balk at warranty repair requests that are made without one.